Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
As for their claim to know the same God the Father, the same Christ the Son, and the same Holy Spirit that we know, this cannot help such people either. For Korah and Dathan and Abiram, along with the priest Aaron and Moses, knew the same God, living under the same law and religion, and called upon the one true God who was to be worshipped and invoked; yet because they overstepped the ministry proper to their station and claimed for themselves, against Aaron the priest who had received the lawful priesthood by God's own appointment and the Lord's ordination, a license to offer sacrifice, they were struck down by God and at once paid the penalty for their unlawful attempt, nor could sacrifices offered irreligiously and unlawfully against the right of the divine ordinance stand valid or avail. The very censers, too, in which incense had been unlawfully offered, were by the Lord's command melted down and purified by fire, drawn out into thin plates and fastened to the altar — not that priests might use them again, but rather that they might stand before those who came after as a memorial of divine indignation and vengeance, and serve to correct posterity, just as sacred Scripture says. 'Let it be,' it says, 'a memorial to the sons of Israel, that no outsider who is not of the seed of Aaron may draw near to offer incense before the Lord, lest he become like Korah.' And yet those men had not created a schism, nor had they gone outside and shamelessly and belligerently rebelled against God's priests — which is exactly what these men now do, tearing the church apart and rising up against the peace and oneness that Christ established, as they try to set up a see of their own, seize the primacy, and claim for themselves license both to baptize and to offer sacrifice. How can such men bring anything to completion, or obtain anything at all from God, through undertakings that have no lawful standing, when what they are attempting stands against God himself and is granted them by no right? This is why it is pointless for the patrons of Novatian and like-minded schismatics to insist that saving baptism can sanctify anyone there, in a place where the one performing the baptism plainly has no right to baptize at all.
And that the severity of the divine judgment against such presumption might be still better understood, we find that in a crime of this kind it is not only the leaders and instigators but also those who merely take part who are marked out for punishment, unless they separate themselves from fellowship with the wicked — as the Lord commanded through Moses, saying: 'Separate yourselves from the tents of these hard-hearted men, and touch nothing that belongs to them, lest you perish together in their sin.' And what the Lord had threatened through Moses, he fulfilled: whoever failed to separate himself from Korah and Dathan and Abiram at once paid the penalty for that impious fellowship. By this example it is shown and proved that all who mingle themselves, with irreligious recklessness, with schismatics against their bishops and priests will be liable both to the guilt and to the punishment — just as the Holy Spirit also testifies through the prophet Hosea, saying: 'Their sacrifices are like the bread of mourning; all who eat of them shall be defiled' — teaching and showing plainly that all who have been defiled by the sin of the instigators are joined together with them in the same punishment, without exception.
What merit, then, can there be before God among people upon whom punishments are inflicted by divine judgment? Or how can such men justify and sanctify those they baptize, when they themselves, as enemies of the priesthood, attempt to usurp what belongs to another, what is unlawful, and what has been granted to them by no right at all? We are not surprised, all the same, that such people, out of their own perversity, contend for their cause; each of them must of necessity defend what he does, and being defeated they are unwilling to yield easily, even though they are well aware that what they are doing has no permission behind it. What is astonishing — indeed, what ought rather to provoke indignation and grief — is that Christians should stand alongside antichrists, and that betrayers of the faith and traitors to the church should stand within the church itself against the church. Yet since these men, stubborn and unteachable in other respects, nevertheless confess this much — that none at all, whether heretics or schismatics, possess the Holy Spirit, and that for this reason they can indeed baptize, but cannot give the Holy Spirit — we hold them to this very point, that we may show that those who do not have the Holy Spirit cannot baptize at all either.
For since baptism forgives each person's sins, the Lord himself proves and declares in his Gospel that only those who possess the Holy Spirit have the power to remit sins. Once he had risen, he dispatched his disciples with these words: 'Just as the Father sent me, I in turn send you.' Then, having spoken, he blew his breath upon them, saying: 'Take the Holy Spirit. Whoever's sins you forgive will stand forgiven; whoever's sins you hold back will remain held.' Here he makes plain that baptizing and granting the forgiveness of sins belong only to one who holds the Holy Spirit. Indeed John, destined to baptize Christ our Lord, had already received the Holy Spirit while still enclosed in his mother's womb — proof beyond doubt that no one can baptize who lacks the Holy Spirit. Let those, then, who back heretics or schismatics tell us plainly: do they possess the Holy Spirit, or not? If they do, why is it that when their converts come over to us, we still lay hands on them so they may receive the Spirit — when, had it truly been received there, it could have been conferred there as well? But since every heretic and schismatic outside gives no Holy Spirit at all, and hands are therefore laid on among us so that a person may here receive what does not exist and cannot be granted there, it stands to reason that forgiveness of sins likewise cannot be granted through people who plainly lack the Holy Spirit. And so, that men may in accordance with the divine order and the gospel's truth obtain forgiveness of sins, be made holy, and become temples of God, everyone whatsoever who comes over from the church's foes and its antichrists to the church of Christ must be baptized in the church's own baptism.
You also asked, dearest son, what I think about those who obtain the grace of God while sick and in weakness — whether they are to be counted lawful Christians, since they were not washed with the water of salvation but merely had it poured over them. On this point our modesty and reserve prejudge no one's own view, so that each may hold what he judges right and act on what he has judged. For my own part, so far as my modest capacity can grasp, I judge that the divine benefits can in no way be diminished or weakened, and that nothing lesser can occur there, where what is drawn from the divine gifts is received with the full and complete faith both of the giver and of the recipient. For it is not the same in the sacrament of salvation, where the contagion of sins is washed away, as in a bodily and worldly bath, where the filth of skin and body is cleansed, so that soap and other such aids, and a tub and a pool, are required, by which the little body may be washed and made clean. The believer's heart is washed in one way; the mind of man is cleansed by the merits of faith in another. When necessity presses and God grants his own indulgence, the resources of salvation's sacraments bestow their full benefit on those who believe. No one should be troubled, either, that the sick seem merely sprinkled or to have had water poured over them when they obtain the Lord's grace, since holy Scripture, through the prophet Ezekiel, declares: 'I shall pour clean water over you, cleansing you from every uncleanness and every idol of yours; I will make you clean, give you a new heart, and place a new spirit inside you.' So too in Numbers: 'Whoever remains unclean until evening is to be purified on the third day and again on the seventh, and only then will he be clean; but if he is not purified on those two days, he stays unclean, and that person is to be cut off from Israel, for the water of sprinkling was never sprinkled over him.' And again: 'The Lord said to Moses: Take the Levites out from among the sons of Israel and purify them; carry out their purification in this way — sprinkle over them the water of purification.' And once more: 'The water of sprinkling serves as their purification.' From all this it is clear that sprinkling water carries the same force as the full saving bath, and that whenever this happens within the church, where both giver and recipient hold an undivided faith, everything can stand firm and reach its completion and perfection through the Lord's majesty and the truth that faith holds.
As for the fact that some call those who have obtained the grace of Christ through saving water and lawful faith not Christians but 'clinics,' I cannot find whence they take this name — unless perhaps those who have read more widely and in more obscure sources have found this term 'clinics' in Hippocrates or Soranus. For my part, the only 'clinic' I know is the one from the Gospel, and I know that his sickness did nothing to prevent that paralyzed and feeble man, who had lain in his bed through long years, from reaching the fullness of heavenly health; nor was he merely roused from his pallet by the Lord's indulgence, but with his strength restored and renewed he carried the pallet away himself. And therefore, so far as it is given us to grasp and judge by faith, my own opinion is this: that whoever has obtained the divine grace in the church, by the law and right of faith, should be judged a lawful Christian. But if anyone thinks that such people have obtained nothing, because they were merely sprinkled with the water of salvation rather than washed in it, then, if they are indeed empty and void of grace, let them not be deceived — so that, should they recover from the discomfort of their illness and regain their strength, they should be baptized. But if those who have already been sanctified by the baptism of the church cannot be baptized again, why should they be scandalized in their faith and in the Lord's indulgence? Or perhaps they did obtain the Lord's grace, only in a smaller and reduced portion of God's own gift and the Holy Spirit — Christians in name, then, but not equal in standing to the rest?
Quite the opposite: the Holy Spirit comes with no measured limit at all, but is poured out in its entirety upon the one who believes. For if the day is born equally for all, and if the sun's light falls evenly and alike across everyone, how much more must Christ — the true sun, the true day — grant the light of everlasting life in his church with that same even hand? We see the sacrament of this equality celebrated in Exodus, when manna flowed down from heaven and, by prefiguring things to come, showed the food of heavenly bread and the sustenance of Christ who was to come. There, without distinction of sex or age, a gomer was gathered equally for each. From this it was apparent that Christ's indulgence and heavenly grace, which was afterward to follow, would be divided equally to all, without regard to sex, without distinction of years, without respect of persons, and that the gift of spiritual grace would be poured out upon the whole people of God. Yet plainly this same spiritual grace, which is received equally by believers in baptism, is afterward either diminished or increased in our manner of life and conduct — much as in the Gospel the seed the Lord sows falls equally for everyone, yet the soil it lands on differs — some of it is lost, while elsewhere it piles up abundantly, yielding thirty, sixty, or a hundred times over. And yet again, since all alike are called to the same denarius, how is it right that what is distributed equally by God should be diminished by human interpretation?
Should it trouble anyone that some who are baptized in sickness were, up to that point, still being harassed by unclean spirits, he should understand this: the devil's obstinate malice retains its power only as far as the water of salvation, and loses every trace of its poison once baptism takes place. We see this pattern in King Pharaoh, who resisted at length, lingered in his faithlessness, and managed to stand firm and gain ground for that whole time, right up to his arrival at the water — but once he reached it, he was overcome and destroyed. The blessed apostle Paul declares that the sea prefigured the sacrament of baptism, saying: 'Brothers, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers stood beneath the cloud, all of them crossed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses by way of that cloud and that sea.' He then adds: 'All of this took place as a foreshadowing meant for us.' This is even carried out today, when through the exorcists, by human voice and divine power, the devil is scourged and burned and tormented, and though he often says he will go out and release the men of God, he lies in what he says, and practices with the same lie of obstinacy and fraud what was formerly done through Pharaoh. Yet once someone arrives at the water of salvation and is made holy through baptism, we should recognize and trust that the devil is there overpowered, and the person now consecrated to God is freed by divine mercy. For if scorpions and serpents, which prevail on dry ground, can, when plunged into water, still prevail or retain their venom, then the evil spirits too — which are called scorpions and serpents and which are nonetheless trampled underfoot by us through the power given by the Lord — could still linger inside someone who, having been baptized and made holy, now has the Holy Spirit beginning to dwell within.
This, in fact, we find confirmed by experience itself: that under the pressure of necessity, those baptized in sickness and who have obtained grace are freed from the unclean spirit that formerly troubled them, and live praiseworthy and approved lives in the church, and day by day make more progress through the growth of their faith into an increase of heavenly grace; while, conversely, no small number among those baptized in good health, should they afterward fall into sin, find the unclean spirit coming back to trouble them once more — which makes it obvious that baptism shuts the devil out through the believer's faith, and lets him back in should that faith later collapse. Unless, that is, some think it only fair that people polluted by unholy water outside the church, among its adversaries and antichrists, should count as baptized, while those baptized within the church are made to seem as though they received less of God's indulgence and grace — and that such honor is given to heretics that those coming from them are not even asked whether they were washed or merely had water poured over them, whether they were 'clinics' or able to walk about — while among us the integrity of the truth of the faith is diminished, and the majesty and holiness of the church's baptism are disparaged.
I have written back, dearest son, to your letter as far as our modest ability allowed, and have shown what we ourselves think, so far as it is in us to think — prescribing to no one, so that each bishop may decide as he judges right, since each bishop must one day answer to the Lord for his own conduct, just as the blessed apostle Paul states, writing to the Romans: 'Each of us will render account for himself.' Let us not, then, judge one another. I wish you, dearest son, always to fare well.